A ‘Rogue’ actor

It’s understandable that in last year’s “The Force Awakens,” Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, as Leia and Han Solo, showed their age, almost 40 years after their first “Star Wars” film. And yet in the new prequel, “Rogue One,” Imperial governor Grand Moff Tarkin looks just the same as ever — even though Peter Cushing, the imposing British actor who plays him, died in 1994. How’d they do that? First filmmakers chose a look-alike, BBC soap actor Guy Henry, says the Washington Post. Computer effects morphed him into Cushing, so Tarkin is free of the dreaded CGI “dead eye” effect.

‘Poppins’ fresh

Speaking of blasts from the past, Dick Van Dyke says he will appear in “Mary Poppins Returns,” Rob Marshall’s musical sequel due on Christmas Day 2018. “This one supposedly takes place 20 years later, and the kids are all grown up,” Van Dyke told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s a great cast: Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury and that guy from ‘Hamilton,’” meaning Lin-Manuel Miranda, who will play a lamplighter named Jack. Emily Blunt takes over for Julie Andrews as the nanny of the title. Van Dyke, 91, won’t be Bert the chimney sweep again. Instead, he’ll be the son of a greedy banker — another role he played in the original, under heavy makeup. “Well, I’ve got to be a part of it,” he said, adding that he would travel to London next spring to film the movie. “I think I’ll just have the one scene, and a little song and dance in it.”

Movie shorts

▪ Denis Villeneuve says the 2017 sequel “Blade Runner 2049” will be R-rated, like the original — “one of the most expensive R-rated independent feature films ever made,” he tells Screen Daily. Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford star. One of their co-stars? KC’s own David Dastmalchian.

▪ Martin Scorsese tells the Toronto Sun he’s still working on his long-gestating adaptation of Erik Larson’s “Devil in the White City.” Leonardo DiCaprio is set to star as a serial killer at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

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Big Sonia (Trailer)

'National treasure,' Holocaust survivor, and diva, Sonia Warshawski, has just been served an eviction notice for her popular tailor shop in suburban Kansas City. A 'wounded healer,' Sonia's trauma comes to the surface as she struggles with the concept of retirement.